


Spoke In The Wheel

by commoncomitatus



Category: The New Legends of Monkey (TV)
Genre: Gen, Grief/Mourning, Reflection
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-10
Updated: 2019-12-10
Packaged: 2021-02-26 02:42:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,800
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21736261
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/commoncomitatus/pseuds/commoncomitatus
Summary: Early(ish) S1. While attempting to comfort a grieving Tripitaka, Pigsy grapples with his own feelings of loss.
Comments: 2
Kudos: 16





	Spoke In The Wheel

**Author's Note:**

> Written for [fortune_favours](https://fortune-favors.dreamwidth.org/). I've been wanting to show Pigsy some love for a while, and my assignment for this lovely Tarot-themed fest couldn't have been more perfect. <3
> 
> Mods: I used the Shadowscapes deck instead of the Rider-Waite-Smith, and attempted a rough [past-present-future spread](https://commoncomitatus.dreamwidth.org/file/48830.jpg):
> 
> 1) Magician (Reversed): manipulation, greed, lack of clarity  
> 2) Tower (Reversed): resisting change, avoiding tragedy  
> 3) Three of Wands: moving forward, looking to the future
> 
> —
> 
> Warning: This fic deals with the aftermath of an abusive relationship, and the messy, complicated feelings thereto pertaining. While the relationship itself is always presented in its proper light, the feelings aren't quite so straightforward.

—

They all carry the marks of what they were.

Monkey thinks he hides it well, arrogant fellow that he is, but Pigsy can see it as clear as daylight: insecurity, frustration, helplessness. It’s in the way he flares his nostrils and grinds his teeth when he can’t perform some miracle or another, when he fails at something that once came to him so easily. It’s in the way he squares his shoulders whenever he and Tripitaka disagree on some trivial whatever, the way he sucks in his breath and tenses and waits — in vain, but still — for the little monk to start chanting.

Monkey’s weakness is weakness. Centuries ago, before the world turned upside-down and dragged them all down with it, he was perhaps the most powerful god of them all. Losing that status would be a tough pill for anyone to swallow, and for an ego like Monkey it must sting more than most. He’s a shadow now of what he was back then, bound to the whim of a human, a tiny, weak-bodied monk with only a mouthful of ancient words to chain and collar him. His name carries perhaps half the weight it once did, and the same is true of his presence; he’s just one more has-been god who should’ve died centuries ago, and that has to hurt like hell.

Sandy hides a lot of herself, but never the wretched little thing she was. Couldn’t, Pigsy supposes sadly, even if she tried; it’s too pervasive, too ingrained in everything she is, too bloody _present_ , even if it should be buried in the past. It’s in the way she quakes under the sky and wilts under the sun, the way she flinches at nothing and keeps to herself, the way she fails to comprehend even the smallest, simplest things. She’s a creature of the dark, a life lived in shadows and dark corners, and the big wide world is a nightmare.

A wild, pain-soaked thing, Sandy, always poised on the edge of madness; for all her talent at hiding, not even she has enough skill to shroud that part of her. Pigsy doesn’t know if they can give her the kind of help she most likely needs, but at least they’re trying. He’d wager that’s a damn sight more than she ever had before.

Tripitaka, soft-hearted little monk, is another story entirely. He tries to keep his history close to his chest, but it’s not exactly a secret and Pigsy often wonders why he bothers. The Scholar’s name is on most people’s lips these days — how funny it is, that someone can go from ‘eccentric lunatic’ to ‘visionary’ in only the time it takes for him to die — and Tripitaka has all but admitted the man was practically his father. He can keep his tears manfully on the inside if he wants, but even an idiot could see that he’s grieving and lost.

Pigsy doesn’t approach him about it. Doesn’t approach any of them about any of their myriad issues, even when he likely should. He’s not generally one to keep to himself, but in this he’ll make an exception. Their stuff is deep and hard and painful, and his stuff is—

Well. Not.

Not even close. Not like losing his powers or losing his family or losing his damn mind. All he’s lost is a life he never deserved and all the pretty trinkets and comforts that came with it. Not the kind of loss any self-respecting soul would feel sorry for.

They’d laugh at him, if it he brought it up in tandem with theirs, and they’d be right to.

They with their fears and their loss and their pain. They with their suffering, real and true, the world quite literally out to get them. They, all three of them, carrying a thousand big and small injustices on their shoulders, and him, ignorant and lazy and selfish, crying over—

What?

A warm bed? Soft pillows? Five square meals a day?

Nah.

He’s deluded, yeah, but he’s not that bloody deluded.

He…

Well. Just one more reason to keep it to himself, yeah?

What they were:

Monkey, powerful and fearless, the whole world spread out under his boots, a king among gods. Gotta be a hell of a fall, going from that to this, and a hell of a crash-landing when you no longer have a magical cloud to catch you.

Sandy, a ragged, rejected urchin, forced into hiding so long ago she’s forgotten why. Lost, confused, broken, nothing left in her head but the one inescapable truth: that the world is cruel and dangerous and hates her.

Tripitaka, safe and loved and well-protected in the arms of a father he never imagined he might lose so violently. A good kid, a normal kid. As normal as a kid can be, anyway, being raised in a monastery by the Scholar himself.

But the Scholar is dead now, and Tripitaka is an orphan, too young and small for the robes he wears and ill-prepared for the journey ahead. And Monkey’s powers are still sleeping somewhere in that stupid mountain, useless and untouchable, while the greatest god that ever lived stumbles blindly through forests and deserts. And Sandy, as wretched now as she was then, has lived alone in the dark for so long that her eyes can’t adjust to the light and her mind can’t adjust to company and her body can’t adjust to anything at all.

And that is what they are now, the three of them with all their shared and separate tragedies, all their traumas and struggles and losses, all their grief and their fear and their pain.

And Pigsy?

Spoiled, pampered, greedy, selfish.

A great big waste of bloody space.

Isn’t that what she always told him?

Not that he ever needed to hear it.

Maybe that’s why she picked him. Quick as a whip, she was: smarter than any god or human he’d ever met, and bloody resourceful to boot. Probably sized him up in about ten seconds, figured out before the first ‘hello’ how far she could push him, and what to do to make sure she’d never need to. Cut him down to size, get him comfortable and keep him well-fed. Most of all, make sure he never, ever forgot that there was nothing else for him.

“Lucky boy,” she used to say, and she was right.

It’s a special kind of luck, good and bad, that can keep a god alive all these years while others of his kind suffer cruelty after cruelty, trauma after trauma, death after death. Pigsy can think of a hundred gods more deserving than him, a hundred gods more worthy of the life he was given, the life he never even had to work for. A hundred gods, five hundred, a thousand, all good and kind and honourable, dedicating their lives to protecting this nightmare of a world, and who’s the idiot who sticks it out?

 _Lucky_. The only good thing he ever had going for him, the only bloody compliment he ever got from her.

He lets it slip one morning, by accident.

They’re caught by surprise, interrupted in the middle of a meagre breakfast by a band of opportunistic demons. Slow and stupid, more noisy than dangerous, their biggest threat is to the peace and quiet. Scavengers, most likely, barren-lands stragglers looking to steal supplies from unwary travellers, not realising until it’s too late that their would-be prey are a damn sight more powerful than the usual merchants and traders.

Not that Pigsy can really blame them for that. Gods are scarce enough these days that the idea of tangling with even one — much less three at once — must have seemed laughably improbable.

Naturally, then, on realising their mistake the demons don’t put up much of a fight. The bulk of them are gone before the brawling even begins, scenting the turn of the tide and scattering to the winds, but there’s always a small handful in any group who push for more than they should, who stick around with their weapons up and their teeth bared, hoping to get lucky.

Pigsy, being intimately acquainted with exactly that kind of demon, knows this far better than most.

Monkey leaps into the fray first, always glad for an excuse to flex his muscles, both proverbial and literal. He’s got two of the idiots on the ground before the others can even blink, preening and smirking and twirling his staff like he’s just taken out an army. It’s a cheap victory, even by his standards, but he flaunts it for all its worth because that’s who he is. Pigsy doesn’t call him on it; he knows bravado when he sees it, and he recognises all too well the hidden thread beneath, the desperation to prove — to himself far more than his friends — that he’s still ‘got it’.

Some of it, at least.

Sandy fights swiftly and effortlessly, silent but for the hiss of her scythe as it carves a path through everything in its way. Clean, efficient, and ruthlessly powerful; experience makes a damn fine teacher. Pigsy leaves her to it, staying the hell out of her way.

As for him…

He’s not much of a fighter. Never was, even way back when. Even when the wounds were all fresh, the world falling apart right before his eyes and nothing to do but fight or run, he still chose the latter, the safer, the easier option. He was lucky then, and he’s lucky now; the only difference is a few centuries of cushy living and carelessness. If anything, he’s even softer now than he was then, if marginally less of a coward.

He does his best, at least. It’s not much next to the god-king and the whirling dervish, but hell, he tries. Ducking, dodging, swinging his rake when he thinks he’s got an opening, but it’s not exactly a secret that he’s their weak link. He knows it, his companions know it, and the demons definitely know it.

The shout comes from behind him. A warning, high and shrill and feminine — not Sandy, she’s busy; it has to be Tripitaka, squeaky-voiced little fellow — and Pigsy whirls around just in time to see a curved, keen blade arcing its way towards his head.

Instinct throws him face-first to the ground, choking on dirt and mud as the _whoosh_ of a near-miss rings like a klaxon in his ears. Adrenaline quickens his pulse until he’s breathless, and for a few awful moments he can only lie there, dazed and disoriented and—

“Done!”

Monkey. Who else? In he leaps, all smugness and swagger, hurtling into the space between Pigsy and his attacker like the big damn hero he thinks he is.

Which…

Okay, fine, maybe he has a point this time.

Could really do without the flourish, though. His staff finds purchase between the demon’s ribs, and that’s the end of that: there’s a shriek, a shudder, a burst of smoke, and then blessed silence.

Done, indeed.

Pigsy hauls himself back up to his feet, dusting down his clothes and trying not to look like a complete and utter failure. No simple task, that — he knows he is, they know he is, even the dead demons know it — but he does the best he can with what he has. Even manages a smile, though by his own admission it’s not much of one.

“Cheers,” he says, in what he hopes is a ‘no sweat’ sort of voice.

Monkey snorts. “You’re lucky you’ve got me around to save you.”

Pigsy wills himself to pretend that doesn’t sting. “Right, yeah.”

Monkey waves a hand, dismissing the moment — and Pigsy himself — like it’s not worth more than a passing thought. Probably isn’t, for the likes of him. The great and powerful Monkey King, no doubt he fought thousands of demons in his day, far bigger and meaner than a few barren-lands nobodies. Probably saved more than his share of useless wannabe-gods, too.

Just another day in the life for him, eh?

Not so for Pigsy.

He’s still getting used to the whole ‘fighting for his life’ thing. He doesn’t relish the violence, no more than he relishes the exercise and exertion of being on his feet all day, and he’s lousy at it to boot but what can he do? This is who he is now, the path he’s chosen for good or ill. He’s had too many near-misses in his life, dodged too many losses and too many tragedies, escaped too much of the suffering and pain that laid his companions low and made them strong. It’s about time all that good luck caught up with him. It’s about bloody time he learned that even the luckiest god in the world can’t hide from his folly forever.

Tripitaka, biting his lip and looking awfully young, says, “Are you okay?”

For the little monk’s sake, Pigsy lets his smile tighten into a grin. “Sure.”

“Really?”

Perceptive, that young man, not that Pigsy really needs the reminder. He recalls far too well, how quickly and easily Tripitaka saw through him; they hadn’t even been properly introduced, but the clever little monk saw every part of him in a single glance. A god in the service of a demon, refusing to kill humans, trying to toe the line, knowing all the while that something somewhere would eventually have to give…

He was doomed from the bloody start.

Still, he’s not as soft as they think he is.

So he tells himself, anyway.

“Sure,” he says again, all breathless bravado and lies, lies, lies. “Always land on my feet, I do. Luckier than a sack of cats. Just like—”

He stops, but the words keep going, tearing right through him like a runaway cart. _Just like she always said_.

Tripitaka, being rather less tactful than he is observant, makes a ‘go on’ sort of gesture. “Just like…?”

Pigsy hides his grimace by pretending to catch his breath, then waves a vague, dismissive hand in Monkey’s direction. “Uh. Just like that big show-off said, eh? ‘Lucky to have him around to save my bacon’.” He clears his throat. “So to speak.”

Unable to help himself, Monkey smirks. “You’re _all_ lucky to have me around.”

Tripitaka rolls his eyes at that, but lets it slide. He’s moved on from biting his lip, now he’s chewing on his tongue and frowning at Pigsy with a look that’s entirely too discerning for comfort. There’s a few reasons Pigsy never spent much time with the monks of Palawa, and that bloody look is about three-quarters of them.

“Anyway,” he says hastily. “Crisis over, yeah? Don’t suppose we can get back to our breakfast now?”

He’s not surprised — disappointed, for sure, but not surprised — when no-one takes him up on that.

“You eat if you want,” Monkey snorts, like the need for food is some terrible weakness, like they don’t all hear his stomach growling when he’s hungry. “I’m going to go scouting, see if I can hunt down those stragglers.”

Tripitaka wrinkles his nose. “There’s no need for that,” he chides, unimpressed and priestly. “They left us in peace. We should give them the same courtesy, unless they come back.”

Monkey’s glare could cut through steel.

“We’re not in your stupid, safe little monastery now, monk,” he snaps, just a touch too sharply. “There’s no freedom out here unless we take it for ourselves.”

Intentional or not, that strikes a keen blow. Tripitaka deflates instantly, his whole body seeming to shrink down until he’s even smaller, and looking terribly fragile. Grief swirls around him like fog, thick and heavy and reeking of pain; Pigsy would recognise that sour, sorrowful stench anywhere. He wonders if Monkey can see the nerve he’s struck, wonders if he’d care even if he did. His arrogance is as legendary as his talent; he’s probably just smug that he’s won a point against the little human who can so easily subdue him.

Whatever his feelings, if he has any, he doesn’t say anything more, just spins on his heels and stalks off into the brush like that’s the end of it. An expert, that one, at getting what he wants; Pigsy makes a note of that.

“Don’t listen to him,” he says to Tripitaka, keeping his voice low to counter Monkey’s lingering temper. “He’s been stuck in a rock for five centuries. What does he know about freedom?”

“Rather more than he knows about tact,” Sandy volunteers blithely. She’s crouched in the grass, gathering up the demons’ weapons with her usual obliterative focus. “Someone should probably dispose of these, yes?”

“If you like,” Tripitaka says, sounding suddenly exhausted.

Sandy stares at him for a moment, head cocked, assessing the sudden shift in his mood. Smarter than Monkey, and much more tactful — surprising though that is — she knows better than to prod the poor boy; she studies him for only a beat or two, then shrugs, takes the bundle of swords and sticks into her arms, and glides back up to her feet.

“Guard him well,” she says to Pigsy in a firm, authoritative sort of voice.

Pigsy swallows the urge to roll his eyes. “Righto,” he says, dripping sarcasm. “Keep him safe from the trees and bushes. I’ll be sure to do that, yeah.”

“Good.” Oblivious as ever, she only nods. “Because he’s worth ten of you.”

And then she’s gone as well, a blue-and-white blur streaking off towards the horizon like she’s being chased by something worse than demons. Probably for the best, the disappearing act; at least she doesn’t see the devastation left in her wake.

Pigsy’s discomfort is a simple, obvious thing. It’s never fun to be reminded of your weaknesses, and Sandy knows enough about his that it always feels a touch more personal from her. She lived for years in the hellscape that he helped to create; she knows all his dark deeds, and likely a thing or two about his feelings too. When she says Tripitaka is worth ten of him, she’s not just speaking as the little monk’s biggest fan.

He’ll have to keep an eye on her. Maybe try to win her over a bit, let her know he’s really changed, convince her that they really are on the same side now. It’ll be a challenge, to be sure, but the idealist in him wants to believe it’ll be worth the trouble. A team is only as strong as its weakest link, after all, and he hates that that’s always him.

That’s a project for another day, though. For now, weak as he is, he shunts the self-loathing and misery aside and focuses on the more pressing, thornier issue: the little monk with a world of pain in his eyes.

The anxiety, Pigsy recognises well, and the self-consciousness that goes along with it; they all know Sandy’s blind devotion makes Tripitaka uncomfortable. But there’s something else underneath the simple stuff, a sort of shame or guilt that makes no sense at all.

Not for him, anyway.

For Pigsy, sure. He’s lived with shame and guilt for as long as he can remember, riding on the coat-tails of bigger, stronger, better gods, hiding behind the skirts of powerful demons, playing the tough-guy, the strong-arm, the bodyguard, playing whatever bloody role they told him to, so long as it didn’t involve actually doing anything. He’s been so many things to so many people, and not one of them was true; guilt is something he wears like a second skin.

Wouldn’t have expected it from a monk, though, and especially not that one. Straight as an arrow, their Tripitaka, from the moment they first laid eyes on each other. He knew who he was, he knew what Pigsy was, and he knew exactly what they would have to do — the two of them together — to make things right. Centuries of easy living and hard choices swept out of sight, centuries of keeping his nose clean and his head down, undone in ten seconds by that little monk, so straight and so clear, so bloody sure he knew what was right.

There’s none of that surety in him now. No larger-than-life holy man, none of the strength that rang in his voice when he said his own name. Only a boy, small and sad, wearing the same broken face Pigsy still sees when he looks in the mirror and tries — and fails — to catch a glimpse of himself. It’s the face of someone who knows they’re unworthy.

This time it’s Pigsy’s turn to say, “You okay?”

This time it’s Tripitaka’s turn to smile and lie.

“Of course.” The smile wavers. It’s almost imperceptible, just the faintest little flicker, but Pigsy knows too much about putting on a brave face not to catch it. “Just a little shaken, that’s all. Demon attacks, near-misses, bloodshed, you know…” The grief floods to the surface for only a fraction of a second, and then the guilt drives it back, powerful and potent. “Monkey’s right. I’m really not used to life outside the monastery.”

Hm.

There’s a few things Pigsy could say about that. He could point out, for example, that Monkey has his own adjustment issues to deal with, that he’s not exactly ‘used to’ life in the big mean world either; he’s never known outside his perfect memory of the Jade Mountain, much less life in a future like this, where gods like them are hunted and hated and halfway extinct. He could point out, if he was feeling particularly vindictive, that after five hundred years’ imprisonment, the great and powerful Monkey King probably isn’t even used to life outside a rock.

He could make a whole lot of jabs at Monkey’s expense, and with the preening jackass not even here to defend himself. He could get a lot of satisfaction out of that, if the mood took him.

Ah, but…

He’s supposed to be turning over a new leaf, isn’t he? Supposed to be growing and evolving, becoming a better man, a better god, a better bloody person. Wouldn’t be a good start, even if Monkey does deserve it.

So, instead, he sighs, shakes his head, and says, “We’re all out of our depth here, mate. All four of us.”

Tripitaka musters a shaky laugh. Weak as ditch water, but it counts for a lot that he has it in him to try. Struggling or not, he’s a bloody brave boy, and that’ll take him a whole lot further than he probably realises.

“Yeah.” And just like that, the moment of mirth is gone, replaced by a grief even deeper than before. “I mean, none of us are the shining heroes the Scholar anticipated, really, are we? We’re all so… _flawed_.”

“You say that like it’s a bad thing.”

It slips out before he can stop and question whether or not he should say it, and by the time his brain catches up with his mouth it’s too late to take it back. There’s pain in the little human, deep and rich and cut wide open, and Pigsy is about the last person who has any right to go poking his nose into it. But here he is, jumping in before he can stop himself, and there’s nothing he can do about it now. It’s done, he said it, and all that’s left to do now is hold on and hope the currents don’t rush too hard.

Tripitaka’s reaction is a subtle, fleeting thing: he recoils only a little, drawing back like he’s caught sight of something dangerous in the shadows, then immediately catches himself and straightens back up. For someone so sure he’s out of his depth, the young man is doing a damn fine job of keeping his courage close. A far better one than Pigsy, at least, who is still trying to reconcile doing the right thing with all the not-so-right things he had and loved and lost.

He swallows the ache in his chest before it can break to the surface, before Tripitaka can see it and realise now not-alone he is right now. It’s Pigsy’s burden to bear, the fruits of his greed and laziness, and there’s not a human or god left in the world who would or should shed a tear for him.

Finally, very quietly, Tripitaka says, “I don’t know if it’s a bad thing, but it definitely makes things harder.”

Pigsy’s not so sure about that. So far as he can see, being on the same page as everyone else will only make things easier in the long run, for all of them.

It’s one thing, joining up with a rag-tag band of damaged heroes, being one of four, each with their own struggles and problems; he’s not sure he’d feel half so much at home if he was the only one with issues. It bodes well, so far as he’s concerned, that they all have baggage, that they’ve all made mistakes and endured pain and lived through the highs and lows of being. Makes it easier to feel he’s like part of something, really and truly, like maybe his stupidity is no more of a burden than Monkey’s fritzing powers or Sandy’s inability to string a coherent sentence together, or any of the rest of it.

It’ll make them a better team, the broken pieces Tripitaka calls ‘flaws’. He’d bet his life on it.

That’s not really what Tripitaka’s talking about, though. Pigsy’s no expert when it comes to doing good in the world, but he knows a thing or two about the weight of responsibility. Hell, he’s spent half his life laying low to try and avoid it. He knows the paralysed, pained look in Tripitaka’s eyes far too well: he’s afraid that all their flaws, all their weaknesses, every ounce of grief and pain and heartbreak is going to fall on his tiny human shoulders. More, he’s afraid that he won’t be strong enough to carry them all by himself. He’s the one who brought them together, after all; he’s the one with the name, the quest, the great divine purpose. Getting this right, so far as he’s concerned, is all on him.

Pigsy could tell him that’s a load of rubbish — which it is, of course it bloody is — but he doubts the little monk would believe it. There’s no greater martyr than a holy man.

“It was always going to be hard,” Pigsy says instead; he’s not the most tactful god in the world, so he sticks as best he can to the simple truths, the ones anybody can swallow. “Even if we were those shining heroes your Scholar wanted, we’d still be running from one end of the world to the other and back again. Still be hunted by demons at every turn, still be fighting insurmountable odds and all that other fun stuff. I mean, that’s kinda why they call it a ‘quest’, yeah? It was never going to be done in a day.”

“I know that.” He sounds frustrated, but only for a moment; a breath, a sigh, and once again the only thing that’s left is grief. “I just… I wish he was _here_. You know? I wish I could ask him…”

He shakes his head, and lets the words die quietly. Pigsy, being well-versed in the myriad shapes of pain, turns away, giving the poor boy some privacy for the tears he may or may not want to shed.

The silence that follows is a strain on them both. Pigsy doesn’t try to intrude on Tripitaka’s grief; it wouldn’t be his place. He’s not like Sandy, who knew the Scholar personally, or like Monkey, who holds the idealistic little monk’s hopes and dreams in his hands; a word from either of them might bring some kind of solace here, but Pigsy’s just a faceless tag-along, trying to make right his own stupid mistakes, trying to—

Trying to hide, too, from a very different sort of grief.

Not comparable. He knows that. But still…

Well. Hasn’t he always had trouble with perspective?

He knows what it was. Really, he does. And he sure as hell knows what it _wasn’t_. But tell that to the part of him that wanted to believe he had a home there. Tell it to the part of him that wanted so badly — so stupidly— to believe that someone, even a demon, even a monster might see something worth having in him, that someone somewhere might find him useful, might find him—

Ah, hell.

He doesn’t know if demons are capable of love. A god’s emotion, that, because it means being capable of empathy, capable of compassion, capable of feeling—

Capable of bloody _feeling_.

He knows that she wasn’t.

But he is.

And damn it all, he did.

It’s not fair to call it grief. He doesn’t need to hear Tripitaka’s poorly-muffled tears — real grief, that, real loss and real pain — to know this. There’s a thousand worlds of difference between the death of a loving mentor and… whatever the hell Pigsy had with _her_. Can’t even bring himself to call it a relationship, even inside his own head. Can’t even pretend to believe there was more to it than what she wanted, what she needed, what he could do for her.

How many times did she tell him he was worthless? How many times did she remind him that there was nothing else for him, that no-one else would ever want him, that she was the only good thing he ever did?

Enough times that he believed it. Enough that it was the only damn thing he _could_ believe. After a while it became the only truth he knew, the only part of himself he could see, the dirt and grime spread so thick that there was nothing else left, his reflection and his insides all twisted and distorted, transformed bit by bit into the nothing she said he was. He could barely remember being anything else, or believing he could be.

It was never a ‘relationship’. Not by any definition.

He knows that.

There’s no reason for it to feel like a loss. No reason for him to feel the pain of it in his chest, the sorrow in his stomach, the tears in his throat, so much like the ones he hears now catching softly in Tripitaka’s.

He has no _right_.

He—

“I’m sorry.”

This from Tripitaka, the lad having apparently having composed himself enough to speak again. It’s absurd, of course, that he’d think he has any reason to apologise and Pigsy wastes no time in making sure he knows that he doesn’t.

“Don’t be daft.” He lets the word sit for a beat, light but earnest. “There’s no shame in having feelings, mate, no matter what that mutton-brained Monkey might want us to think.”

Cuts a bit too close to home, that does, and he’s too bloody soft to stop it from showing on his stupid face.

Well, maybe that’s not such a terrible thing, letting his own conflict be seen. There is comfort to be found in empathy, after all, or so he’s heard; maybe Tripitaka will find some solace in realising that he’s not the only one feeling—

Uh.

Something.

Pigsy still doesn’t want to call it loss or grief or anything like that. There might be comfort in shared pain, but Tripitaka is working through something so much more real and so much more true than Pigsy can ever imagine, and it’s not right to call it the same thing. Real loss, real pain, all his, and all the weight of the world tossed onto his shoulders in the moment he should have been free to grieve and mourn and cry.

No wonder the kid looks so much smaller than he is. No wonder his voice is so high, his eyes so damn soft all the time, so close to tears, so ashamed of letting them fall. Tossed out into the cold, alone and lost and terrified, not even given a bloody minute to adjust. That’d throw anyone for a loop, and Tripitaka is human to boot. He’s mortal, he’s fragile, and he deserves someone who really, genuinely understands.

Pigsy’s never been good at that sort of thing. Too damn easy to be selfish, to make everything about himself and his problems. He hates himself for it, but not enough to stop poking at the seething, infected wound, his old memories, his old feelings, his old hurt, like he’s addicted to the way it feels. He’s no good companion to a soft, sweet-hearted little monk. He’s unworthy of being the one to try and offer him comfort.

“You know,” he says, backpedalling clumsily, “maybe I should go and help Sandy with those weapons. Give you a little bit of peace and quiet, you know?”

Tripitaka looks aghast. “She’d kill you!”

Quite probably, yeah. She was pretty adamant about the whole ‘he’s worth ten of you’ thing, and from Pigsy’s experience she’s not really one for hyperbole. Still, he shrugs it off with a careless grin, like they don’t both know she scares the living daylights out of him.

“I can handle her,” he lies. “If you want some privacy, that’s more important.”

Tripitaka looks conflicted. Like maybe he’s not sure what he wants. Like maybe a part of him does want the privacy but another part doesn’t want to be left alone with his broken heart. Pigsy knows that feeling better than he’d care to admit; he’s spent half his life making the most ill-advised choices, getting his hands and his soul dirty, doing unforgivable things, just because the alternative was loneliness.

 _Loneliness_. His biggest weakness, his greatest fear, his worst nightmare. Stupid, sure, but it is what it is: he’d sooner cross the line into a demon’s bed than have to spend a week, a day, even an hour all by himself.

Apparently Tripitaka is similarly affected by the thought of isolation, because he lifts his head and mumbles like he’s reading Pigsy’s mind, “I don’t think I want to be alone right now.”

Pigsy tries — and likely fails — to keep the relief from showing on his face.

“Ah,” he says, rather less casually than he was shooting for. “Righto, then.”

Tripitaka smiles his gratitude, watery but warm, then turns away again. Doesn’t want to be alone, but it seems he doesn’t feel ready to share his tears either. Fair enough, Pigsy thinks, and stays back.

He watches, silent and without judgement, as the little human’s body bends in on itself, creasing almost double in his attempts to keep the grief hidden away. Like it’s some kind of secret, like it’s shameful for a young man to be seen crying. Pigsy wonders if he learned that from the Scholar, if it’s some kind of monk thing to not show his deeper feelings; Tripitaka is open about so many things — the quest, the state of the world, all the stuff he does know — but he tucks _himself_ away nearly as desperately as Sandy does.

It’s instinct in her, though: gnarled, twisted roots digging in lifetimes deep. But Tripitaka hasn’t lived the life Sandy has, and he doesn’t have the scars of survival to explain his hiding. Pigsy has never seen so much self-protection from someone who was brought up safe and loved and warm.

He doesn’t know what to do with any of this. He doesn’t even know how to handle the heavy emotions in his own heart, much less soothe someone else’s; he is suddenly vividly aware of their respective sizes, he the great big massive god, and Tripitaka so small and sensitive, so terrifyingly and humanly squishable.

Pigsy feels clumsy and awkward, now more than ever; he doesn’t know what to say, or if he should try to say anything at all. Not wanting to be alone doesn’t necessarily mean he wants company or conversation or any of that social-interaction stuff. Sometimes not being alone just means not having to listen to your own heartbeat, your own breathing, your own damn thoughts. Sometimes it just means not being alone.

Then again, sometimes it means having a ready-made distraction.

Pigsy turns back to the cold, miserable remains of their breakfast.

“Not much to salvage in this,” he sighs, all faux-mourning and melodrama. “You want me to whip up something more edible?”

A rustle of fabric tells him Tripitaka is shaking his head, but Pigsy stays where he is and doesn’t look back.

“The Scholar preached moderation,” Tripitaka says after a beat. His voice is soft, but not quite as reverent as Pigsy would expect. “He’d probably say the interruption was a lesson: we don’t need more than we had, and the rest should be saved.”

“Doesn’t sound like much fun, this Scholar,” Pigsy blurts out, then instantly regrets it.

Tripitaka makes a strangled sound. Not quite a sob, but it’s so rough and ragged that it might as well be. Pigsy curses his lack of decorum, fumbling desperately for an apology, but before he gets the chance to say anything more, the little monk surprises them both with a shaky laugh.

“A fair point, I suppose,” he says. “My five-year-old self would have definitely agreed.”

Pigsy ventures a chuckle of his own. “I’ll bet he would,” he quips, gentle but playful, testing the waters. “Boys will be boys, eh?”

“I…” And just like that, the pain is back, thickening his voice and making him sound hopelessly lost; Pigsy has no idea what he said wrong, but he clearly mis-stepped quite horrendously. “…I guess.”

Pigsy knows better than to press this. 

Instead, carefully and consciously tactful this time, he sighs, pokes at their leftovers, and grumbles, “Sometimes I think I’m the only one of us who appreciates a decent meal.”

“You probably are.” That’s better. He’s still tremulous, but at least he sounds like himself again, like a little mouse peeking out of its hole, checking that the world is safer than it was. “I think Monkey sees it as a point of pride or something, not caring about that stuff. You know how he gets. And Sandy’s still adjusting to having any kind of food at all, so…”

Pigsy wills himself not to flinch.

“Right, right,” he says, coughing. “Still, it’s a crying shame. Nothing quite like good food to bring people together. Nothing quite like it to make you feel…”

He stops, but not before his voice gives him away, throat tightening and constricting around the last word until he sounds nearly as lost and broken as Tripitaka did a moment ago.

Desperate as the young monk is for a distraction, he doubts Tripitaka will let the shift slide below the radar this time.

And, of course, he doesn’t. “Pigsy?”

Pigsy bites his tongue, hard. “Hm?”

All of a sudden, Tripitaka is standing right in front of him, craning his neck, squinting up into his face. Out of nowhere, he appeared, without so much as a word of warning. Little fellow must be taking sneaking lessons from Sandy or something; he’ll have to keep a careful eye on that.

When he’s done staring, Tripitaka takes a single step back and says, in a pointed, don’t-try-to-lie-this-time sort of voice, “Are you okay?” 

There’s a heavy sort of hopefulness hiding behind the severity, and it strikes an unpleasantly familiar chord: the old misery-loves-company bit, the need to bask in someone else’s suffering for a change.

Pigsy is not particularly thrilled to have his feelings poured out onto the ground like that, but he has to admit it’s fitting. Reshaping his unwanted sentimentality into something useful, erasing and rewriting the stupid, senseless things he know he shouldn’t be feeling, twisting and tangling them up until maybe they become something new. They will never be anything but pain to him, but if they can give some small comfort — or even just a distraction — for Tripitaka, if they can give anything at all to this poor little monk who has lost so much already…

Well. Little victories, eh? Fragile, fractured, but still worth something. You take what you can get, Pigsy has learned, and any kind of something, however small, is a damn sight more than nothing.

He takes a breath, swallows down his aching heart, and channels as much of Monkey’s confident bravado as he can. No simple task when he’s about as far from it as a god can get.

“Ancient history, mate,” he says, waving a casual, careless hand. “Nothing but ancient bloody history.”

The shadow of Tripitaka’s sorrow seems to shift, like he’s reorienting himself and becoming a monk again.

“You miss her,” he says.

It’s not a question, but there’s no weight behind his voice either. No judgement, no derision, not even the faint little flicker of anger that they both know would be perfectly justified. Here he is, shedding tears for his dead mentor, his _father_ , the leader of the resistance and one of the most accomplished humans in the world right now… and there’s Pigsy, brooding and sulking over his demonic ex—

Well. Ex- _something_.

He squares his shoulders, tries to find some tiny little remnant of the courage it took to leave her.

“That’d be daft,” he says to Tripitaka. True enough, though they both know it doesn’t change anything. “She was a demon. A bloody monster, she was, right down to her bones. Never cared about anything but lining her own pockets. What kind of masochistic idiot would miss someone like that?”

Tripitaka sort of smiles. It’s lopsided, like he’s not really used to doing it, like the sensation is new and strange, but that just makes it more effective. Comforting, sort of, to see it happen and know he’s partway responsible for it. With all the bad stuff he’s wrought in his lifetime, it’s weird being responsible for something almost good.

“I don’t know,” Tripitaka says, with a quiet warmth that seems as rare and precious as his smile. “Why don’t you tell me?”

Still smiling, the look on his face is so damn tender, like he’s finally comfortable here in the realm of someone else’s feelings, like it’s easier staring into the twisted mess of Pigsy’s heart than having to deal with the aches and pains inside his own. Pigsy doesn’t much enjoy being stared at that way, but he’d do just about anything to stop that poor monk’s tears from flowing so hard and so fast, anything that might help to balm his loss and his grief, the damned unfairness of it all. Heaven knows, the boy could use a break, and if it comes at his expense, so be it.

“I miss the high life,” he says, dutifully unconvincing. “The bloody luxury, you know? A warm bed, soft pillows, five meals a day…”

Tripitaka’s quirked brow makes it clear he doesn’t believe that, but of course Pigsy neither expected nor wanted him to; it doesn’t matter if his shame and stupidity is on display, only that Tripitaka’s mind is on this and not himself.

“Really?” It’s getting a little harder for him to keep smiling, Pigsy can tell, but he manages it just the same, courageous and strong for both their sakes. “Because I’m pretty sure you still eat five meals a day now.”

Pigsy snorts. “Roots and bark don’t count as a bloody meal.”

“Ah. Of course.” He falters a little, though, seeming to look inward for a moment. Pigsy wonders if he’s taking stock of the material things that he misses too, the communal comforts of the monastery, the Scholar’s kind heart, the simplicity of being protected and sheltered, of having a home. Then, in a blink, he shakes it off. “That’s really all you miss? Good food and feather pillows?”

Pigsy sighs.

“You saw the stranglehold she had on that town,” he says. :You saw the way she treated…” His voice hitches, the sting cutting a little too close and too hard, but he gets it back under control before Tripitaka can soften into too much pity. “Hell, _everyone_. A fellow would have to be deaf, blind and worse than stupid to miss that kind of treatment.”

Tripitaka finds his arm and squeezes lightly. His fingers are shaking but his grip is surprisingly strong, and Pigsy just rides it out, dumb and mute, more overwhelmed than he’d ever admit. Like an ass like him ever deserved such a gesture.

“You do, though,” Tripitaka presses, as soft as one of those blasted pillows. “Don’t you?”

Pigsy sits on that for a few minutes. There’s little practical point, of course — the silence speaks loud and clear, and answers as well as any words — but the weight of having to actually say it hangs heavy and he finds he needs a moment to prepare.

Tripitaka, patient and priestly, doesn’t push him. He lets go of Pigsy’s arm and retreats, giving them both a little room to breathe, and lets the silence stretch out as long as it needs, sober and sorrowful but not the least bit uncomfortable.

A monk through and through, that one, for all his insecurities and shyness. He knows when to embrace the quiet, when to speak up, and when the best thing to do is nothing at all. A born listener, a born companion. When all this quest business is over and done with — and when his voice has broken — he’ll make a damn fine holy man.

Pigsy draws more comfort from that than he’ll ever be able to say. It is Tripitaka’s quietness, his refusal to pass judgement even when he should, that finally bolsters his courage enough to confess the truth they both already know:

“Yeah.” The word is heavy, redolent with self-loathing, but Tripitaka doesn’t even blink. “Yeah, I miss her. Stupid, I know, but there it is.”

“It’s not stupid,” Tripitaka says, sounding genuinely puzzled, like the thought really never occurred to him that it might be. “You lived with her in that palace for years. Centuries, possibly?” He inclines his head there, as though hoping for confirmation either way, but Pigsy only shrugs and remains quiet; no sense in making it worse with numbers. “Either way, it was your home. Good or bad, _she_ was your home.”

True enough. But…

Pigsy sighs, lets out the other truth they both already know, the one that’s a damn sight harder to admit. “She was no kinder to me than she was to her subjects, you know.”

Most of the time, anyway.

Too damn often. But still…

Sometimes…

Rarely, to be sure, but sometimes…

When he caught her on a good day, when he did something right, when all the stars aligned and the world lit up for just a single second and everything seemed…

Even when he knew it wasn’t, still it _seemed_ …

He sucks in his breath, shaking off the unwanted memories, the good that hurt so much more than the bad.

“She was a terrible person,” Tripitaka agrees, ever gentle, ever quiet, ever careful not to intrude too much. “Even by demon standards. I mean, I only saw a little of the way she treated you, but…”

He shakes his head, seemingly unable to finish. His eyes seem to glow a little, bright with a serenity he can’t seem to find for his own sorrow, only in the eyes of others. Empathy, Pigsy realises. Such a weird thing, that; he’s experienced so little of it in his life, he almost doesn’t recognise it at all.

“Yeah,” he says, mirroring Tripitaka’s tone as best he can, his compassion and his carefulness. “Yeah, she was a bloody nightmare. No point in pretending she wasn’t, now, is there?”

Of course not.

But still…

But _still_.

Tripitaka looks like he wants to step forward and touch him again, but he doesn’t. He stays where he is, reverent and respectful and says, with the same practiced softness, “You’re not excusing her behaviour, you know, by missing her.”

Maybe not. But can the same be said for when he was doing her dirty work?

“You’re a kind lad,” he says, “but I think you’re giving me too much credit.”

Tripitaka chuckles, spreading his arms wide as if to say ‘probably, yes’. Courage, that boy, in every direction.

“You know,” he says, keeping a little distance in the word, like he’s pretending to speak to himself. “The Scholar used to say, ‘you can find a grain of good in anyone if you look hard enough’.”

Pigsy has to bite his tongue to keep the venom inside, the disdain and disbelief. Never speak poorly of dead folks, he chides himself, and especially not in front of the old monk’s adopted, grieving son.

But still. Had to be talking out of his ass, didn’t he? Or maybe he just hadn’t met anyone as irredeemable as…

Well.

He doesn’t say it. Doesn’t want to ask the obvious question, the one he knows has no good answer. _So where’s the good in the likes of me?_

He doesn’t want to force this sweet, optimistic little monk to try and find a reply, to dig down on Pigsy’s behalf and try to justify it, the awful things he did, the countless ways he told himself it wasn’t so bad, it was only survival, he was just getting by, just doing what he had to, that he didn’t bloody _care_ —

Funny, that. All those years trying convincing himself that he didn’t care, that he didn’t feel anything. Now it’s over, and all he can think about is how much he really, really did.

He sits with that for a moment, private and silent. Lets it wash over him, lets all that wasted emotion really hammer him over the head. Too late now to realise that he was in too deep, but here he is just the same, kicking his feet and treading water, trying to keep from drowning.

Too late to change. Too late to do anything at all. But isn’t that just him all over?

Thing is, he doesn’t really know how he’s supposed to feel. It’s been so long since freedom was an option, he has no idea what to make of it now it’s his. He thinks he’s supposed to feel relieved, like he’s cast off some old shackle; he should be over the moon that it’s over and finished and done, that he’s out from under her heels, that the town is safe and so is his dirty, damaged soul. He told himself for so long — himself and any other poor soul who’d listen — that he had no choice, that he didn’t care for the life or for her, for any part of it, that it was all about survival, nothing more.

Hard to convince himself of that now, though, in the company of folks who know what the word really means.

It’s not survival to sleep in a feather bed, no matter who it belongs to. It’s not survival to bask in warmth and comfort, to swim in luxury and bathe in opulence, to be lavished with gifts and love and—

Well, whatever twisted version of ‘love’ a demon is capable of feeling, anyway. Whatever the hell it was she felt for him.

Whatever it was, it wasn’t survival.

Living in a sewer, abandoned and hated and driven mad, that’s survival. Being chased out of your home — a monastery, a holy place, a _sanctuary_ — by monsters who would kill you and everyone you ever loved, that’s bloody survival. Even just thinking the word in connection with his situation makes him feel like the worst kind of fraud.

 _A grain of good in anyone,_ the Scholar told little Tripitaka. Pigsy wants so badly to believe it but he’s lived a different truth for too damn long.

“Not yet,” he sighs, ignoring Tripitaka’s raised eyebrow. “But maybe one day. Redemption and all that.”

Tripitaka looks confused, but doesn’t ask for any clarification; clever young thing that he is, he takes the shift in tone and runs with it. He really will make a wonderful holy man one day.

They’re both quiet for a short time, neither one of them really knowing what to say; Pigsy is burned out on memories of things he should resent, and Tripitaka doesn’t seem to really know how to follow the abrupt change. He’s blinking rapidly now, his eyes swollen and raw, looking like he’s on the brink of fresh tears. 

Pigsy hates that he’s let this slip so far backwards, that there’s nothing he can do to make it easier for the poor boy. He hates, most of all, that the only pain he can share is a perversion of the word, a mockery of all the deep, dark emotions that Tripitaka is trying so hard to work through.

He thinks about going back to the breakfast thing, fixing up something new and edible, even as he knows that no-one else wants or cares about it. Give his hands a task, something simple and monotonous and easy, shut down his heart for the time it takes to savour the scent. Give them both a distraction, something that doesn’t hurt and won’t make either one of them yearn for the broken past. _Simple_ , such a beautiful word.

He’s about to give it a shot, the excuse already half-formed on his tongue — _better go forage some more if I’m going to try and make a meal of this mess_ — when Tripitaka lifts his head, tearful and urgent, and blurts out, seemingly from nowhere, “It’s never simple.”

Pigsy starts, disoriented by the faint echo of his own thoughts, and manages only a puzzled, “Say what?”

“It’s never simple,” Tripitaka says again, achingly soft. “Leaving behind the people you love.”

 _Ah_.

No hope of changing the subject, then. Fair enough.

Still, Pigsy tries to deflect, to deny. “I wouldn’t say I…” 

Tripitaka doesn’t smile, but his lips twitch. “Really?”

It’s devastatingly effective, that little word, and it makes Pigsy deflate completely. “All right, all right. No, it’s not bloody simple. It’s messy and it’s complicated.”

Tripitaka doesn’t seem placated; he doesn’t really seem to notice Pigsy at all.

“I don’t…” He wets his lips, looking lost and vulnerable and making a great effort to keep his eyes down and his face hidden. “Sometimes, I think about him, and I don’t… that is, I…”

But whatever it is he does or doesn’t do, he seems unable to give it a voice. Pigsy watches him closely, trying to gauge the morose look on his face, trying to figure out whether it’s an invitation to step in and prod a bit or a plea for him to back off and change the subject completely.

“It’s like you said,” he says, aiming for some vague middle ground. “Never bloody simple. Whatever you think or feel, or whatever else is going on in that little human head of yours, it’s all good. You know? Grief isn’t a linear thing.”

It’s the best he can come up with, and he knows it sounds like the crock of crap it is. But it’s all he has, and so it has to do.

Isn’t it the same thing he told himself, all those years? All that time spent lounging untouchable in his gilded palace, watching his fellow gods die and starve and be cut down, watching from his sanctuary as their numbers dropped and dropped. All that time hiding in plain sight, hearing their names spoken with derision and fear and violence.

He grieved them, of course, as best he could from his warm bed and his feather pillows, but the part of him that was gorged on luxury and hid its self-loathing carefully out of sight couldn’t help but wonder sometimes if they had themselves to blame for their plight, if all that misery could have been avoided if they’d just been more like him.

If they’d just been willing to get their hands a little dirty, if they’d just been willing to _compromise_ …

A terrible thought, and one he’s not proud of. Definitely not one he’s ever going to let see the light of day. But he indulged it, he did, in his darkest, most mournful moments, those days where the only comfort came from the cruellest lies.

Didn’t she teach him well?

It’s nothing to be proud of, he knows. That kind of destructive denial hurts everyone, and none more than the liar himself, but he knows more intimately than most the specific kind of hurt that brings it on, when the emptiness runs so deep, engulfs so completely it becomes easier to point fingers and blame than shed any more tears. He knows that hurt, he lived that hurt, he wrapped the denial and the self-protection and the venomous lies around himself so tight that for a time he couldn’t remember any other way of being.

So, then, he’s not exactly surprised when Tripitaka looks up at him, heartbreak and guilt glimmering in his eyes, and whispers, “Sometimes when I think of him, all I feel is anger.”

Pigsy keeps his expression schooled and neutral. It’s a talent he perfected a long time ago, a necessity that came from uncertainty; never knowing which side of her he’d be facing, it was safer to stay indifferent, expressionless. Safer to appear lifeless until he could be sure she was receptive to something living, until he could be certain she wasn’t angry, wasn’t vengeful, wasn’t—

Doesn’t matter.

The reasons are long gone, he reminds himself quickly; it’s the talent that matters now, and he puts it to kinder, softer use, letting Tripitaka see by his non-reaction that he is neither surprised nor concerned by his little confession.

“Understandable,” he says, taking a couple of steps back to give the young monk some breathing room. “Guy could’ve been the best adoptive dad in the world, but to those he left behind…” He sighs. “When you lose someone like that, sudden and unexpected and bloody unfair, you’re bound to feel alone. You feel... abandoned, I guess.”

 _I guess_. A little too telling, the uncertainty there. Because, yeah, how could he know for sure?

Only one person he let himself care about over the last few hundred years, and he’s the one who walked out, he’s the one who turned his back on what they’d made; he’s the one who did the abandoning, he abandoned it and he abandoned her and he abandoned—

No.

No, he knows that’s not right.

He does, he does.

He cut himself loose, dammit. Set himself free, and the whole damn town along with him. He broke the shackles, broke out of the cage, became a god again, despite her best efforts to keep him bound and docile. He shouldn’t feel guilty for that. He—

Damn it all, he did the right thing.

He keeps that at the front of his mind. Tries to, at least. He reminds himself, again and again and again, every time the softer memories surface. He tells himself a thousand times a day that he doesn’t care where she is, what happened to her, that he hopes she got her just punishments, that he wouldn’t even care if the people of that poor little town tore her to pieces for what she did—

His stomach gives a violent kick.

He tells himself he’s just hungry.

“I don’t feel abandoned,” Tripitaka murmurs. His voice, high and sad, drags Pigsy back to the present. “It’s just… there’s so much he should have told me. So many things he kept hidden, kept secret. So many questions he never answered…”

 _…and never will,_ he doesn’t say, but Pigsy can see it in his eyes.

“Like I said,” he says, aiming for compassion, “understandable.”

Tripitaka nods, but doesn’t look very comforted. “He knew what was coming,” he goes on. “He knew how dangerous it was. He knew _everything_ , but he kept it all locked up where I couldn’t reach it. He thought he was protecting me, but he should have been preparing me instead. And now it’s too late: he’s gone and I’m here. I’m _Tripitaka_ , whether I want to be or not, and I don’t know anything about what it means because he never told me.”

There’s some peculiar turns of phrase buried in there, something that bears some deeper thinking, but now isn’t the time for all that. Pigsy sighs, thinks of his own burden of responsibility — _redemption_ , in all its ugly, ill-fitting colours — and claps the little monk on the shoulder.

“I feel you there, mate,” he says, pulling away, “believe me.”

Tripitaka manages only a fraction of a smile, and that for only a fraction of a second, and then he’s speaking again, frenzied, feverish, with the desperation of someone who knows he’ll never find the courage to speak these truths again if he doesn’t let them all out in a single breath.

“He’s _gone_ ,” he chokes, ragged this time; he’s wringing his trembling, feminine hands and his eyes are wet and hard. “He’s gone and I’m all alone and he never told me anything, he never prepared me for any of this, he never even let me—” He growls, swiping angrily at his eyes, then changes tack. “I’m scared all the time, I don’t know what I’m doing, I’m lost, I’m alone, and I can’t stop thinking, I can’t… if he’d just told me something, _anything_ , maybe it wouldn’t be so _hard_.”

“You’re not alone,” Pigsy says automatically. Then, because he knows from experience that’s not the important part, “And it doesn’t matter. It’s a big, mean, nasty world out there; I’d wager you know that a whole lot better than I do. It’s okay if you feel like you can’t face it. Hell, it’s normal. And it’s okay to blame him too, for making the whole sorry mess harder than it should’ve been. If that’s what your heart wants to feel right now, it’s all good.”

“It’s not _fair_ ,” Tripitaka counters, sniffling like a boy much younger than he is. “He did the best he could. I know he did. Anything he kept from me, I know he was trying to keep me safe. He had enemies, terrible demon enemies, and I was his d— his _child_. I needed him to keep me safe, and he did. But I need him now as well, and he’s gone, and that’s not fair either. And I don’t… I don’t…”

He sobs again, tears drowning the end of the sentence. Not that it matters; Pigsy has the gist of it by now, and he understands more than he’d care to admit. Apparently he’s not the only one feeling guilty for what he feels.

He doesn’t say again that it’s okay. Tripitaka is a monk; no doubt he’s tended to enough lost and grieving souls over the years, or at least watched the Scholar and his fellow monks do it. He must’ve heard or spoken those words a thousand times by now; deep down inside himself, he already knows that this is okay, that it’s a perfectly normal part of the grieving process. He’s a smart boy, and he was raised for this.

But he’s not there yet, and hearing it said a dozen times, or a hundred, won’t make the conflict magically disappear. It won’t make him resent his father any less while the pain is still raw, and it definitely won’t make him feel less like a monster for feeling that way.

Pigsy may or may not know this from personal experience.

What a pair they are, he thinks, with only a touch of bitterness. A god ashamed of his soft heart, of the love he never should have felt for a demon who never deserved it, and a human — the softest human of all — feeling anger and betrayal at a father-figure he knows did the best he could. Both of them sad and lost, both of them feeling guilty, both of them hating themselves for it.

“It’d be a damn sight easier if we could just switch places,” he says with a sigh. “Or switch feelings, anyhow.”

Tripitaka musters a hoarse, rasping laugh. “If only it worked that way,” he sighs. “I think my anger would be a lot more useful to you. And I think… I mean, I wish I could hold on tighter to my softer feelings. I loved the Scholar, I really did, but all I seem to feel right now is fear and anger and betrayal. It’s not the way I want to remember him, and it’s not the way he deserves to be remembered.” He looks so hopeless, so helpless; Pigsy would give anything to draw all that hurt right out of him, but he is helpless too. “It’s not how I want to feel, but it’s like… it’s like the demons killed everything else in me, and the anger is all that left.”

It’s not as odd as it sounds. Truth be told, Pigsy’s wondered the same thing himself a time or two over the years. Wondered, in the throes of his self-protection and denial, if she worked some kind of magic on him, twisted his heart and his head, made him feel all those things he swore he never would. If she sucked all the good right out of him, all the stuff that’s supposed to be alive in the heart of a god, too powerful to be extinguished. If she made him so much like her he forgot how to be like himself.

Ah, if only.

But he knows better than to believe that stuff now. He could blame her for a lot of things, no doubt about that, but he fell all on his own.

He shakes his head, forces himself to focus on Tripitaka instead, so small and sad, probably wondering if there’s anything left of the pure and perfect priestliness he’s supposed to embody, the bright and beautiful little monk’s heart that saved a wasted god from himself and saved a town from ruin. Like a moment of mournful anger could ever destroy something as precious as that.

“You’ll be fine,” Pigsy says, firmly now. “That anger you’re feeling, it’ll see you through. Keep you going, hold you up, give you strength while you’re all scared and confused and whatever else. The softer stuff, the missing him, the grieving, the sadness… it’ll come when it’s ready. You can bet on that.”

Will the opposite hold true for himself, he wonders. And does he really want it to?

Will he wake up one morning and find all that senseless, stupid warmth replaced by the colder stuff he should be feeling instead? Will he try to picture her face one day and finally see it as it really was? Not the beautiful early-morning smiles, not the glow of triumph or those rare and precious moments of genuine affection, but the monster, the ice-hearted demon who would watch her own home burn before she’d ever surrender the treasures it held.

Should he really strive for that kind of clarity? Would it do him any good to feel cold instead of warm, to hate instead of hurt? Would it make any difference at all?

Perhaps sensing the darker turn of his thoughts — and not for the first time, either; dangerously perceptive, that little monk — Tripitaka sidles back to his side.

He doesn’t reach out this time, no doubt still trapped inside his own melancholy thoughts, but he is present and aware, and when he speaks it is with clarity and quietude, exactly the kind of gentle encouragement Pigsy would expect from a holy man. It is typical of a monk, he thinks, sad and proud, to focus all his efforts on someone else even when he should be working through his own sorrow.

“It feels wrong,” Tripitaka says carefully. “Encouraging you to hold onto your softer feelings. To miss her, to care about her, all that. Like I’m saying you should pretend things were better than they were. To let yourself believe there was anything worth missing in all that, when we both know there wasn’t.”

Pigsy grunts his agreement, unoffended by the bluntness. It is wrong; he knows this, has known it for a long time. She had him bound so tight, tangled so completely in her web of seduction and deception, can he really say for sure that the good moments ever really existed?

“Suppose it doesn’t matter,” he says at last, for his own sake more than Tripitaka’s. “Whatever I think, whatever I feel… it’s not like it’s going to change anything, is it? The good, if there was any, or the bad.”

“Maybe not.” Tripitaka’s smile is sincere but still a little tight with pain. Somehow, that helps. “But still. She was a terrible person and she treated you terribly. It feels strange telling you it’s okay to miss her, to care about her. Sort of like I’m encouraging you to… I don’t know, romanticise her or something?” His eyes gleam with new tears as the smile fades, and Pigsy feels heartbroken and privileged to be allowed to see it happen. “I feel like I should be telling you to feel something more productive, you know? Something more righteous. To resent her, maybe, or to feel vindicated and strong, free at last from a horrible situation.”

Pigsy snorts, though of course there’s nothing funny in this. “Be a damn sight easier if I did feel that way.”

“Yeah.” Tripitaka sighs, visibly swallowing his own feelings. “But that’s not what I really think, and I don’t want to tell you to feel that way. Even if you weren’t already feeling the, uh, other stuff. I don’t think I’d want to tell you to feel that sort of coldness.”

Pigsy tilts his head, more grateful than he’d care to admit. “Wouldn’t be very priestly if you did, now, would it?” he chides. “Aren’t you holy-wisdom types all about forgiveness and compassion and such?”

“I’m not very holy,” Tripitaka says brokenly. “And I’m definitely not wise. If you’re looking for spiritual guidance, you’d be better off finding a real—” He stops, looking horrified all of a sudden, then swallows hard, as if resisting the urge to turn around and run away. “I mean, uh… someone more worldly than me.”

“Now, where’s the fun in that?”

He blurts it out automatically, because it’s the first thought that leaps into his head, but it must have been the right thing to say because Tripitaka’s whole body seems to slump, and he bursts into a high, delirious sort of giggle, as though dizzy with relief. Such a strange, self-conscious young man, but Pigsy is only happy he could help.

Tripitaka sobers swiftly, of course, just like he always does, but a little of the steadiness lingers this time, bleeding through the last of his tears, the last of the tension; he’s not quite calm, not yet, but he’s getting there.

“You’re right, though.” He gestures vaguely, still self-conscious but growing more comfortable, bit by bit, by the second. “About the forgiveness, I mean. If you can feel that way, even for someone who doesn’t deserve it, that’s a good way to be. I mean, I’m supposed to be a monk, and I can’t even find that for someone who _does_ deserve it. The world’s a hard, unforgiving place. There’s so little compassion left in it, you know?”

Pigsy chews his tongue. He’s right, of course, but…

“She’s part of the reason why,” he points out. “You get that, right? Her and her kind. The world’s hard and cold and unforgiving because demons like her made it that way. Isn’t that what this little quest of yours is all about? Bringing the likes of her to task for the evil they’ve done? Surely that should be more important than some stupid sentimental…”

He doesn’t finish.

He doesn’t need to; Tripitaka is still smiling, and this time there’s no water behind it at all, only affection and warmth and that depthless, unfathomable faith he wears so well.

“Maybe,” he agrees easily. “But we did take her to task, didn’t we? And you played a big part in that. She’ll be punished for her wrongs because you did what’s right. You don’t need to punish yourself any more than you already have.”

Pigsy’s not really sure about that, but it’s hard to turn away from the light in the little monk’s eyes, hard not to feel a little of that light reflected in himself too, just by standing close to him.

“You reckon?” he asks, and for once it’s his voice that waves, his voice going high and squeaky, his voice that sounds so delicate and feminine and so damn _small_.

“I do.” Tripitaka’s honesty is radiant, breathtaking; it almost brings Pigsy to his knees. No-one has ever looked at him like that before, like he’s somehow worthy of their faith and their warmth, of any part of them at all. “There’s no reason to twist yourself into knots over something you’ve already changed. Whatever you were yesterday, it doesn’t matter. Today you’re the reason she’ll never hurt anyone again.”

It sounds so big, so important when he puts ilike that. Pigsy is shaken, thrown; he wants to say something pointed and poignant, something that might get across the weight of what he’s feeling right now. But apparently he’s been spending too much time with Monkey, because what comes out is a smug, preening, “I guess I am, aren’t I?”

Tripitaka elbows him in the ribs. “Don’t get a big head about it. You know you’ve still got a ways to go.” They both sober, then, but it’s easier now, more comfortable. “I’m serious, though. If you can find good feelings somewhere in everything that’s happened, I think you should hold on to them. She’s caused enough pain already. You’re only defying her even more if you can soften it into something a little more…”

He falters. Pigsy snorts. “More _godly_?”

“Godly, yeah.” He reaches out, like he wants touch Pigsy’s arm again, then seems to think better of it and steps back. “It’s like what you said: you should let your heart feel what it wants to feel. Especially if it’s something kind.”

Pigsy, touched far more by the words than any physical contact he might have made, feels his heart swell. He’s not sure he’s ever had a conversation this long before; certainly, he’s never had one with someone who actually gave a damn what he thought or felt or wanted. He has never been this much a part of something, has never been connected or useful or valued by anyone for any reason. He’s never been worth even a tenth of the pride he sees in Tripitaka’s eyes just now, and he doesn’t know how to begin to thank him.

So instead, with as much quiet reverence as a washed-up old god can manage, he grins, cuffs the little monk on the shoulder, and says, “If that’s not holy wisdom, I don’t know what is.”

He means it, and he means so much more than his clumsy words will ever convey. Tripitaka may be a strange little monk, wilder and more angry than any holy man Pigsy has ever met, but maybe that’s the kind of monk they need for this strange little quest. Clearly they can’t rely on _him_ — the strong-arm, the tough guy, the big mean bodyguard — to get angry when needed; someone has to pick up the slack for his soft, stupid heart.

That it has to be the monk, of all people…

Well, maybe that’s something Tripitaka needs too, for himself. A place where he can feel all the less-than-priestly things his heart wants to feel — even anger, even at his beloved Scholar, who deserves his wrath no more than _she_ will ever deserve Pigsy’s warmth and love — and know that he will face no judgement.

Maybe that’s what they all need.

The other two, as well, such as they are. A place for Monkey to get his powers back at his own pace, with no-one prodding or poking at him, no-one demanding or ordering him to be more than he’s ready for. A place for Sandy to adjust to being safe for the first time in her life, to being a part of the world after a lifetime spent hiding from it. A place for the four of them — weird, messy, dysfunctional, but together — to become the heroes they need to be, each with their own struggles and weaknesses and flaws, and none of them ever judging the others for theirs.

It’s a perfect haven. Healthy, heartfelt, and nearly harmonious. Everything a home should be.

What a strange, beautiful miracle, Pigsy thinks, that he finally knows enough to recognise one.

—


End file.
